Stock damage advice please

[Enthusiast]

Hi all

A belated introduction coupled with a request for advice. I've been shooting airguns, rimfire and full bore rifle for getting on for 30 years, recently rediscovered airguns - initially to get my two lads going but have become completely addicted. I shoot with the Ford HFT mob. I have gained loads of really useful info from this forum, in particular I restored an HW77 using a link on it.

My question is, I bought son the younger a brand new S400 carbine - superb, so good I traded my hornet against a secondhand 400 classic.

At one of the HFT nationals the 400 carbine was supported against the metal pegs, with the result that the side of the stock has a number of scratches, not deep but upsetting. Can these be removed without stripping the whole stock down? I know that you can use a steam iron to remove dents from a stripped stock, but will this work on a finished beech stock?

Grateful for any advice.

regards

Richard Chase, father of Ruaraidh who is doing extremely well at HFT except for scratching new air rifles.

[baz]

I expect the beech will have been sealed by laquer so hot iron will not work unless you strip laquer off

Baz

[Sam]

Agree with Baz,

It's a much harder job to raise dents covered by layers of laquer, also, the laquer has a tendancy to turn cloudy when exposed to extreme heat for prologned periods.

Best bet is to strip, steam and refinish i'm afraid.


HTH.

[Enthusiast]

thanks chaps.

Ho hum, I was afraid of that..there I was wondering what to do with the long dark winter nights..

Richard

[EddieP]

As said above, you'll almost certainly need to remove the lacquer before steaming, but sometimes there IS enough porosity in the lacquer to let enough moisture through to do the job. Since the worst you can do by attempting this is to damage the lacquer, which will have to come off anyway if it doesn't work, there's probably no harm done in giving it a try?